Principal Software Engineer - React Native

Location: AU: Melbourne: (260 Burwood Rd); AU: Sydney (45 Clarence St) Workplace: Hybrid The role / impact We are looking for a Principal Engineer to join the teams behind the Xero Accounting App (XAA), our flagship mobile experience that helps small business owners stay on top of their finances wherever they are. You will define the standard for engineering excellence at Xero, strengthening technical capabilities and evolving the architectural direction to support our global product roadmap. Core Tech Stack (Non-Negotiable): React Native, TypeScript, and cloud-native backend APIs form the foundation of this role. You will be architecting, building, and leading across all three domains as an integrated system. You will bridge the gap between product vision, strategy, and execution, shaping the React Native technical roadmap to ensure our architectural decisions align with strategic goals. We need a leader who can solve complex mobile engineering problems at scale, seeking clarity within complexity and demonstrating smart ways to simplify while breaking down silos and driving cross-functional collaboration between mobile and backend teams. The ideal candidate is someone who, - Drives architectural strategy across all mobile squads and domains. - Shapes the mobile technical roadmap in close partnership with product, design. - Leads the most complex and ambiguous technical initiatives across the organisation. - Sets the engineering standard for the entire mobile organisation across code quality, reliability, operational maturity. - Acts as a force multiplier at the organisational level by coaching Lead and Senior Engineers. - Anticipates industry shifts, evaluates emerging technologies, and future-proofs the mobile platform. Initially, you will focus on - React Native Excellence: Establishing reference patterns, best practices, and architectural standards for high-performance React Native applications. Optimize for bundle size, performance, native module integration, and TypeScript-first development—raising the bar across the codebase. - Cross-Boundary Technical Leadership: Leading collaboration across mobile and backend teams, ensuring API contracts are designed with mobile consumption patterns in mind, and removing friction at the feature boundary. You'll advocate for the mobile perspective in system design while owning the React Native side fully. - TypeScript-First: Championing strict TypeScript practices across the React Native codebase, establishing type safety standards, and mentoring engineers on patterns that catch errors at compile time rather than at runtime. - Systemic Operational Excellence: Leading strategic prevention of issues by defining frameworks for SLOs, quality standards, crash analytics, and reliability metrics specific to mobile performance and UX. - Capability Elevation: Acting as a force multiplier by coaching lead engineers in React Native architecture, recruiting top React Native + TypeScript talent, and engaging with the broader React Native community. - API & Backend Exposure: Practical experience working across the feature boundary with backend services and BFF/API layers. You can reason about API contracts, mobile consumption patterns, and troubleshoot integration issues—but you're not expected to be a deep backend engineer owning infrastructure, databases, or full service architecture. - AI-Led Engineering for Mobile: Define and execute a vision for AI-assisted development that transforms how React Native code is written, tested, and optimized—delivering step-function improvements in mobile development velocity. Additional Strengths: - You bring extensive experience building and leading mobile applications in high-growth, large-scale environments—understanding the unique challenges of scaling React Native codebases, build pipelines, and release automation. - Your approach ensures React Native architecture and product strategy are inextricably linked, translating technical possibility into beautiful, performant customer experiences. - You focus on strategic prevention rather than reacting to incidents, using delivery and production metrics (crash rates, API latency, bundle size trends) to identify systemic improvements. - A natural ability to thrive in ambiguity allows you to act as a stabilising force, translating shifting business directions into high-level React Native technical roadmaps. WHY THIS MATTERS React Native powers ~70% of the Xero Accounting App. Success in this role means establishing the technical standard for how we build mobile at Xero—defining architecture patterns, TypeScript practices, performance benchmarks, and the processes that support high-velocity mobile development. You'll influence hiring, technical culture, and the mobile engineering roadmap for years to come. This is not a backend role; it's about owning mobile excellence end-to-end. Where and how you can work Our teams are located in Australia and this hybrid role is based in Melbourne or Sydney, offering the flexibility to balance deep-focus work with high-bandwidth collaboration in our beautiful offices. Please apply even if your experience isn't a perfect match! At Xero, we hire based on your skills, passion, and the unique perspective you can bring to our culture.